Princeton Review’s Shameful MBA Ranking

For eight years now, the Princeton Review and Entrepreneur magazine have been publishing rankings of the top business schools for entrepreneurship. Today, for the third year in a row, Babson College’s MBA program is at the top of the list. The rest of the top five? Chicago’s Booth School of Business, Michigan’s Ross School, Brigham Young’s Marriott School, and the University of Arizona’s Eller School of Management.

If you’re wondering where Harvard, MIT, Berkeley and Wharton are, they didn’t make the top 25. There’s the Acton School of Business in Texas which is ranked 11th by Princeton Review and Entrepreneur. And there’s the University of Southern Florida’s Business School which is ranked 25th. But no Harvard, MIT, Berkeley, or Wharton.

WHERE IN THE WORLD IS HARVARD?

Harvard has an entire building filled with faculty and students devoted to entrepreneurship called the Arthur Rock Center, named after the HBS alum who invested in both Apple and Intel. Harvard boasts 35 faculty members who teach entrepreneurship, the second largest faculty group at the school. All first-year MBAs at Harvard have a required course in entrepreneurship and can choose from nearly two dozen second-year electives on the topic, one of the richest elective offerings in entrepreneurship in the world. Though only 3% to 4% of Harvard grads launch companies right out of school, about half of Harvard MBAs end up as entrepreneurs 15 years out. Even more surprisingly, Harvard alums compose nearly 25% of the entire venture capital industry. But Harvard fails to make the Princeton Review list. A Princeton Review spokesman says it is because Harvard refused to participate in its surveys.

If you’re curious as to where Stanford’s Graduate School of Business is ranked, it is several places behind schools in Tucson, Arizona, Provo, Utah, and Houston, Texas. That’s right, the school that is in the middle of Silicon Valley, the world’s entrepreneurial hotbed that every emerging nation is trying to duplicate, is merely number eight. That’s despite the fact that 10% of Stanford MBAs launch companies at graduation. Number eight behind the University of Arizona and Brigham Young.

In fact, only half the schools in Princeton Review’s top ten even make the top ten list of best entrepreneurial programs put out by U.S. News & World Report, which bases its ranking on a survey of deans and MBA directors.

Improbable, right? Indeed. The most important thing to understand about any ranking is that the methodology determines the result. It’s not about which program is best or which program is right for you and your career needs. It’s about the quality and the integrity of the methodology and whether you even agree it makes any sense.

THE BIG DIFFERENCE BETWEEN U.S. NEWS AND PRINCETON REVIEW.

It’s interesting to examine the differences between the U.S. News list and the Princeton Review list. The most fascinating difference? U.S. News can’t even cleanly rank the top 25 schools in entrepreneurships because the results are so close. In fact, the magazine has five schools tied for the rank of 16th, three MBA programs tied for 21th, and two-way ties for 7th, 12th, 14th, and 24th. To its credit, what U.S. News is conceding is that there is no meaningful statistical difference among these schools so it would be unfair to rank them separately. Princeton Review and Entrepreneur have no qualms about this. Each of its 25 schools have a single rank. Is it because their results have statistical relevance? We doubt it. But, of course, you won’t know because Princeton Review doesn’t disclose overall index numbers or much else.

U.S. News Ranking & School

Princeton Review/Entrepreneur Rank

1. Babson College

1

2. Stanford

8

3. MIT (Sloan)

NR

4. Harvard

NR

5. Pennsylvania (Wharton)

NR

6. Indiana (Kelley)

NR

7. Berkeley (Haas)

NR

7. Southern Cal (Marshall)

14

9. Texas-Austin (McCombs)

9

10. Arizona (Eller)

5

11. Northwestern (Kellogg)

16

12. Michigan (Ross)

3

12. UNC (Kenan-Flagler)

20

14. Columbia

NR

14. Chicago (Booth)

2

16. Santa Clara (Leavey)

NR

16. Syracuse (Whitman)

21

16. UCLA (Anderson)

NR

16. Virginia (Darden)

7

16. Washington (Foster)

17

21. NYU (Stern)

NR

21. Rice (Jones)

6

21. St. Louis (Cook)

NR

24. DePaul (Kellstadt)

NR

24. Gonzaga (Spokane, WA)

NR

DATA: U.S. News, Princeton Review. NR means not ranked.

To understand exactly what the Princeton Review is ranking, you should be able to turn to a story that describes in detail the methodology being used to drive the result. Unfortunately, there is little if any insight into how the clever people at Princeton Review are cranking out these wacky results.

In fact, these rankings violate every journalistic principle. Readers are given only a vague notion of what considerations were made in creating the ranking—not how these various components are weighed. Most of the underlying data used to rank the schools is hidden from readers. Just as bad, readers are not told which schools chose not to cooperate largely because they believe the ranking is either inconsequential or, worse, intellectually dishonest.

WHEN ‘TRADITION’ IS AN EXCUSE.

What does the Princeton Review have to say for itself? “The methodology published on the site is as much as we make available,” says David Soto, director of content development for the Princeton Review. “We never have released the weightings.”

Why? “Tradition,” he flatly replies.

Soto says he has worked on this list for four years and can’t divulge the weights applied to the data provided to the Review by the schools. He says there is “near equal” weight applied to the three categories considered: “academics and requirements,” “students and faculty,” and “outside the classroom.”

Let’s take that last one. Here’s how Entrepreneurship describes this peculiar category: “Schools were asked whether they have partnerships with other schools that allow access to their entrepreneurship program, and how many officially recognized clubs and organizations they offer for entrepreneurship students. They were also asked how many non-curriculum-based activities and competitions they offer in the area of entrepreneurship, as well as how many officially sponsored mentorship programs they have for entrepreneurship students. They also were surveyed about their entrepreneurial scholarship offerings.”

Not very enlightening. So if a school has more clubs than another school, it is one of the best entrepreneurship programs in the U.S. If they’ve done a few partnerships with other schools, that is a measure of quality? If they have scholarship money to toss around, that makes them a great school?

Nonsense. Princeton Review and Entrepreneurship should be ashamed of themselves for publishing such trash.

Commentary by John A. Byrne, editor-in-chief of Poets&Quants and is the former executive editor of BusinessWeek and the former editor-in-chief of BusinessWeek.com. He created BusinessWeek’s MBA rankings in 1988.

About The Author

John A. Byrne is the founder and editor-in-chief of C-Change Media, publishers of Poets&Quants and four other higher education websites. He has authored or co-authored more than ten books, including two New York Times bestsellers. John is the former executive editor of Businessweek, editor-in-chief of Businessweek. com, editor-in-chief of Fast Company, and the creator of the first regularly published rankings of business schools. As the co-founder of CentreCourt MBA Festivals, he hopes to meet you at the next MBA event in-person or online. View all posts by John A. Byrne

P&Q Insider

$397.00

You can cancel your membership at any time. We do not offer refunds, however, delivery and accompanying benefits will continue for the remainder of the current billing period. You may cancel by emailing feedback@porticopay.com or, you may notify us of your intent to cancel at any time by emailing feedback@porticopay.com.

We have relationships with business schools and employers who are actively looking into offering community or corporate memberships. Please check back with us at a later date. We will update this page with news about partnerships like these that may offer a free or discounted membership.